In December 2025, Cursive Knives opened its doors as an independent bookshop in Meanjin Brisbane. You can visit us in person, come along to a book club or event, and shop audiobooks online (online book shopping is coming!)

We’re also a community on Substack – a kind of mailing list meets commonplace book meets conversation pit. Join us!

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Where we began

In Summer 2022, amid yet more covid lockdowns, I ran Cursive Knives : Reading and Writing Sylvia Plath; an online course in weekly sessions. Participants were led through a reading list of Plath’s poetry, given context around her life and writing, and introduced to creative prompts to create their own writing, with a theme for each session.

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“I feel like I’ve got a lot out of each session […] you’re a fantastic facilitator.”
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In 2023, the second course, Cursive Knives : Reading and Writing The Bloody Chamber took place over six weeks; reading through Angela Carter’s iconic collection and writing from prompts inspired by each of the stories. Since then, there’ve been courses on body horror short stories, Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties, reruns of Sylvia Plath and Angela Carter, and too many mini workshops to list, with prompts from tarot cards, NASA photography, dinner parties and unsent text messages.